Wharton Stories

Hostfully: Beautiful Online Guidebooks for Better Guest Experiences

This startup helps you save time and upgrade your guest experience. Co-founded by Wharton alum David Jacoby, W’01, Hostfully’s digital guidebook platform makes it easy to create and share custom online guidebooks across all your properties.

The Elevator Pitch

Hostfully, founded by David Jacoby, W’01, Margot Schmorak, and Noah Neiman, helps vacation rentals and short term rentals save time and improve their guest experience. The SaaS platform helps companies create content and share it with their guests in beautiful guidebooks that work on any mobile or desktop device. There’s no app to download, and the first guidebook is free. Hostfully guidebooks help thousands of property managers in 80 countries around the world. They are backed by Acceleprise.VC and Backstage Capital, and the team comes from Apple, NASA, and other venture-backed startups. Hostfully closed a $500K pre-seed round in October 2017–with several customers investing.

Hostfully Guidebooks

There are 50,000 vacation rental companies globally who manage hundreds properties and thousands of guests. These companies are in places like Tahoe, the Jersey Shore, Hawaii, Vail, or San Diego. But technology in this industry has long been neglected. Companies scramble to communicate with guests using outdated 3-ring binders, spreadsheets and antiquated software. Consumer expectations are quickly rising about the level of personalization and quality of communications services that are expected in a vacation rental. This is where Hostfully comes in–to help companies create beautiful, online guidebooks to share important information with guests (See an example here).

Departure information, including where to leave the key and in what condition to leave the unit

Local recommendations, including places to eat, activities, parks, museums, and other attractions

All content on the Hostfully platform is provided by the vacation rental company. Since Hostfully launched, users have created content on the platform 36,000 times in 80 countries!

Tech for Everyone

Hostfully stands out from the rest because of how fast and easy it is for everyone (not just the tech savvy) to use. Building recommendations takes just seconds, because of intuitive integration with Google maps and social apps. They make it really easy to search and make changes to hundreds of guidebooks at once. And since they’re a web application, there’s no app to download, and the guidebooks work beautifully on any mobile device, on desktop, and in print. Business subscribers can customize guidebooks with their logo and brand colors.

Another important note is that most vacation rental companies list on several bookings platforms, including Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, Booking.com, and many others. They also receive direct bookings through their own website. Because they list properties in different places, they don’t want their guidebook tied to one bookings platform. They’re searching for a third-party, platform agnostic solution. Importantly, Hostfully isn’t competing with Airbnb or any of the other bookings platforms.

VIP-SF

VIP-SF is an intense accelerator program for Penn student and alumni startups in San Francisco that are ready to launch.

Meet some of our Fall 2017 members:

Margot Schmorak, CEO, David Jacoby, W’01, President, and Noah Neiman, Head of Product

Startup experience:

David: One of first employees at WellCall, a corporate wellness company acquired by HealthAdvocate in 2012

Margot: Founding team member at Coveroo, sold to Zazzle in 2015. Launched the Apple iPhone Developer Program in 2008.

Noah: Worked at Apple from 2007-2015, Head of Worldwide Promotions and Head of iTunes Retail Analytics

What made you want to start a company?

David is an Airbnb superhost who has hosted 200 guests in his rental units over the last few years. He realized that there was a lack of tools for people who wanted to provide a personalized, local guest experience. At the same time, it is the guest experience that set his listings apart from others. Margot and David met while Margot was searching for a startup that sparked her interests in education, healthcare and travel.

Fun facts about Hostfully:

We are all parents of young children (an under-represented group in early stage startups)

We spoke at the Airbnb Open in 2015 (Paris) and 2016 (Los Angeles)

We’re the #3 Travel publication on Medium.com, and have been written up in Forbes and Skift.